The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for registering unanswered telephone calls.
One of the most useful features of cellular telephone systems is the registration of unanswered calls. If the telephone being called (call recipient) does not reply to a call, either because the line is busy or unanswered for any other reason, the cellular telephone having caller ID facility, can remember the number of the caller and display it on the screen. If the recipient of the non-answered telephone call wishes, he can dial the number displayed at a push of a button and initiate a call at his leisure to the person who tried unsuccessfully to call him.
This feature is limited to telephones with a built in caller ID facility and an alpha-numeric display for displaying the calling number. In addition, the telephone requires the appropriate software and hardware means to select the number and to dial it. Therefore, this feature mainly exists in cellular telephone systems, which contain sophisticated DSP (Digital Signal Processing) hardware enabling this feature.
However, if the cellular telephone is shut down or disabled for example, in public places such as hospitals and airplanes, this facility is not available.
The present invention overcomes the limitation of the previous techniques and enables registration of unanswered calls for any telephone system including analog wired telephone systems. In addition, the present invention enables cellular phones to register unanswered calls even when the telephone is shut down.
There is thus provided in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, apparatus and a method for registering unanswered telephone calls.
The method includes directing the unanswered call to an external server; recording details of the calling telephone, including the telephone number of the calling telephone (caller ID), the time and the date of the call, and notifying the called telephone of the details of the unanswered telephone call.
Furthermore, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the external server is a voice mail box capable of identifying the telephone number of the calling telephone (caller ID). The step of notifying includes the step of the voice mail box preparing a message containing the details and forwarding the message to the calling telephone.
Furthermore, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the external server is a unified message box and the details of the calling telephone are notified via e-mail or through a facsimile machine.
Furthermore, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the step of notifying includes the step of the unified message box preparing a message containing the details.
Alternatively, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the step of notifying includes the steps of the external server associating the telephone number of the called telephone with the e-mail address; and notifying the called telephone by an e-mail message.
Furthermore, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the step of notifying includes the steps of storing the details in a message database, the message database in communication with a plurality of roaming servers; and the calling telephone retrieving the details from any of the plurality of roaming servers. The step of retrieving includes the step of the message being retrieved via telephone or a facsimile machine.